The Life We Wish For
by Grey Streaked Fur
Summary: Haya Pilnur from District 10 tells the story of the 21st Annual Hunger Games and how she had been chosen to compete. Her goal was to protect her District partner, Trig, at all costs, because he had a gift that needed to be kept safe.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hello everyone! I have an idea for a Hunger Games fanfiction. I'm posting this chapter to gather feedback on whether or not I should follow through with it. The style is a little different than most fanfiction you might find.

So please comment on it and be honest. I want all feedback good, bad and ugly. Tell me if you would like to see this character in action!

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games Trilogy. Though nearly all the characters are of my own creation, there will eventually be reference to some familiar names and faces. (If I continue.)

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><p>Chapter 1<p>

I remember that summer in District 10 had been hot. It was a deep, muggy heat that weight heavily on your chest, which threatened to fill your lungs with the same soupy air that surrounded you. It was never the heat that had bothered me, it was that treacherous moisture.

I stood underneath a spindly old tree, hoping to gain some shade from its meager branches to cool off from the day's work. I had been tending to the cattle for the past several hours, taking them to certain designated grazing spots and cleaning up after their messes. I was a mess of dirt, sweat and dung. It was an average working day for me.

I pulled the brim of my Pa's old hat further down my face to protect myself from the sunlight that seeped through the branches. I listened to the sound of the buzzing crickets, who seemed to be just as bothered by the weather as I was. Their high-pitched shrill sounded like tiny screams of heat-induced agony. I didn't blame them; I felt like screaming too. I stirred slightly as the sound of footsteps began to drown out the crickets.

"Hey Hay," A male voice called. I didn't have to look up to know who it was. It was Weston, another worker on the farm.

"_Haya_, Weston. Hay-ya," I scoffed slightly, knowing he never would change. "Greeting me like that just sounds…"

"Redundant," Weston finished for me, having heard me say the same thing over and over again in my feeble attempts to correct him. "I know, I know."

Weston was a dopey kid, with eyes as brown as fresh mud and hair as blazing as the sun. Its orangeish -yellow tone was almost blinding to look at directly. He was a head shorter than I was, and when he would smile up at me, he exposed the big gap between his two front teeth.

"Does Belfield know you're taking a break?" He was referring to Mr. J. Belfield, the owner of the piddley stretch of land where we worked. Belfield was the closest farm to the center village of District 10; I had worked for him every summer since I was thirteen. He would pay my hard efforts with some of the produce from his crops, or a jug of homemade wheat beer. My family was always glad to have the extra food to eat or barter. Nevertheless, the workload was heavy, and I often would find myself taking frequent breaks.

"I was just catching my breath."

"For ten whole minutes?"

"I had a lot to catch," I said with a shrug.

"You know what Belfield will say if he sees you," Weston warned.

"'This is why I should have never hired a girl to do a boy's job, women tire too easily,'" I quoted, puffing out my chest, trying to imitate Mr. Belfield's baritone voice. From an outsider's perspective, it would have seemed that Belfield was a sexist curmudgeon. However, he really was a nice man; he just enjoyed giving us slackers a hard time.

"I'm surprised he hasn't threatened to fire me yet."

Weston laughed. "Naw, I don't think Belfield could find another worker, boy or girl, who can swing an axe as hard as you, or be able to heard cattle in as quickly as you do."

"Don't forget the how many hay bales I can move by hand," I reminded him, basking in my own pride.

"What are you two doing?"

Weston and I jumped up in fear. (It's funny how people used to be able to sneak up on me like that.) We turned in unison to find Hal Belfield standing behind us. At the age of twenty-three, Hal was the oldest son of Mr. Belfield, he was a character that stood tall and proud; his fingernails were caked with dirt and his hands were dark and calloused- the sign of a true worker. It was quite the valued trait in District 10. His hulking frame towered before us, challenging us to dare lie to him.

"Resting," I said, truthfully. Hal was a decent person, despite his terrifying size. That being said, I did not want to discover his angry side.

"Y'all better be back to tending those cows in…ten seconds before I give you something worse to do," he said, pointing to the non-existent watch on his wrist.

"Can't be much worse than being covered in shit," I said, pulling at my overalls.

Hal shook his head, refusing to look either of us in the in order to contain the smile that Weston and I knew he was hiding. "Cows, now." He said in a forcibly flat tone.

"And you, "he continued, pointing to Weston "You can go home now." Hal untied a small satchel from his waist belt. "Today's payment." He said gruffly.

I groaned inwardly. Weston would leave work earlier than I, because of his age. The older you got, the more hours you had to put in.

Weston took the small pouch with a hardy thank you. Hal nodded.

"I'll be back for you later," he said to me, "Make sure you get those cows rounded up before dusk,"

"I always do," I said with a sniff. With a final glance, Hal turned and headed back to the barn.

I watched as he walked away before I headed back to my own duties with the cattle. Instead of heading home, Weston would always linger around, and would follow me like a wounded puppy. I would always put up with it though, because I saw him as the little brother I never had.

We walked through the field together, approaching the grazing cows. I picked up a stick as we neared them.

"It'll be fall soon, once this heat breaks." Weston said as he rifled through the pouch that Hal had given him. He pulled out a single blueberry from the pouch and popped it in his mouth. He made a face. "Ugh, that was a bitter one."

"Quit your belly aching, at least it isn't hickory nuts," I said. When the summer season began to shift into fall, the Belfield's hickory trees would be ready for gathering. The year before, I had been paid with hickory nuts for nearly a month. Even after all these years, I still can't stand the sight of them.

Weston just shrugged and we continued our walk in silence. Once I reached the nearest cow, I lightly tapped it with the stick to edge it westward, towards the barn. Belfield had trained those cows well, as they always moved along without a hassle.

"School, should be starting soon,"

"Mhmm," I grunted, tapping another nearby sow. She let out a soft moo before trudging along.

"That means the Reaping will be soon."

I did not respond to him them, and instead had let out a sigh. That year was the start of the 21st Annual Hunger Games, and the final year that I would have to participate in the Reaping. I felt a sense of relief; at eighteen, I only had to go through the spine-chilling experience one more time. Weston, however, had another two years after me.

"How many times did you have to put your name in?" He asked quietly.

I stared at him, not wanting to make him feel worse about his chances. My family had been better off than his own had; I only had placed my name in two extra times. I had no desire to know what he had to put in.

"Let's not talk about that," I said, moving the heard forward. I took another deep breath, telling myself that this would be the last year I would ever have to worry about being picked to participate in the Hunger Games. I thought everything was going to be all right.

Oh, how wrong I was.

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><p>AN; Haya is a little unconventional, but I think that's why I like her.

Please review! Should this work be continued or scrapped?


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I apologize in advance if this chapter seems slow...exposition is a beast of burden. It's an odd concept that I am attempting to run with.

Please Review!

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><p>Chapter 2<p>

That evening I walked home, tired and aching as I clutched the small bag that held my day's payment. Weston had left the Belfield farm before me, knowing that Hal would have had his head if it was discovered that he had yet to leave for home. Despite the sun setting, the crickets still continued to emit cries of distress, only to be drowned out by the croaking of the bullfrogs that lived in marsh between the District Center and the farmlands.

The walk home took about half an hour during the dryer months, but on muggy days that followed the rain, it took twice as long to trudge through the maze of mud. On days like that, I was lucky to make it home before the stars came out. By the time I had reached my home, the moon hung high in the sky and the brightest of stars had begun to appear against the inky canvas above.

My childhood home was one of the nicest in the district, aside from the District Leader's home and the butchers' and the Victor houses that were located further down the road. It had two stories, constructed out of brick and stone. Pa had once told me it had been imported from District 2, before the war. It stood tall and proud, a structured representation of my father's status.

My father was the town doctor, not a veterinarian (which is a common job in this District), but an actual human doctor. Doctors were rare in the Districts. In fact, my father had been one of only two medical doctors in all of District 10, which meant nearly half of our entire District would come to see him. This made him quite popular, and rather wealthy.

I walked around the side of it towards the back door. I always had to come through the back door after working on the Belfield's farm; Ma would have a fit when I trudged dirt into the front room. I would run my hand across the brick as I walked by, feeling the remnants of the day's heat still trapped in the rough surface.

"I'm home," I said through the screened door as I took off my boots on the back porch.

My mother had been setting the table when I had arrived and greeted me with a wrinkled nose. She had fought me tooth and nail years before about working out on a farm. She always would explain that there was no need for a doctor's daughter to work such a position. My father had fought back, asking how she would manage to live if anything were to happen to him, and brought up the issue of food scarcity as the Capitol's demands increased. Ma never verbalized her disapproval after that, but I would see it every day in her eyes when I came home.

"Wash up," she sniffed as her nose caught the aroma I had carried in, "You smell like a barn."

"That usually happens when you work with barn animals," I deadpanned as I headed towards the bathroom.

My mother and I had gotten along like oil and water; we never agreed on anything. She had expected me to behave like my older sisters: wearing dresses, flirting with boys, and working a more respectable job (such as a veterinary assistant like Fern or yarn spinner like Penna). However, I had little interest in such mundane work that confined me to the stuffiness of the indoors. Farming, while messy, allowed me the freedom to enjoy the sun and fresh air. Lady-like jobs be damned.

Every evening before supper, I would spend several minutes in the bathroom scrubbing myself off and acquiring clothing that didn't reek of dung. A simple sponge bath would take care of most of the dirt and grime, but my hair had been another matter entirely. It took ages to remove the twigs, dirt and heaven knows what else from my dark mane. I usually would give up after struggling with a comb after a few minutes and resorted to haphazard bun that hid all the atrocities hidden within it in order to appease my mother.

By the time I usually finished, dinner would be ready and Ma and Penna would be setting the table, while Pa leafed through some sort of document or medical book, and that night was no exception. I sat down in my usual seat, up against the window.

"Evening Heart," Pa said, not looking up from his reading for the night.

"Hi Pa," I responded with a smile.

Heart was the nickname my father had given me when I had been quite small. I was the youngest of three, and had spent several hours in my father's office while my mother taught my older sisters how to cook and sew. My father doted on all three of us, but he had spent more time with me due to the age gap between Penna and I. In fact, he had nicknames for all three of us; Fern had been the prefect baby, always happy and bubbly; Pa called her "his Dream, (shorted from Dream-child, after Penna was born), Penna was "his Soul", because Pa was always moved by her beautiful singing voice and her hidden words of wisdom. Then there was me, I was "his Heart". Pa would tell me that we were two peas in a pod; our hearts and minds were always in the same place.

"What are you reading today, Pa?" I asked, always one who was interested in what he was reading.

Pa pushed the collection of papers over to me; I skimmed the written data on the subject on arteries. I did not bother to read them at the time, because I knew I would have to read it eventually. I would, after all, eventually inherit my father's medical practice.

As I said, my father loved us girls, but there was no doubt that he had wanted a son to continue on his legacy. He hadn't been deterred for long though after I had come into the world. Pa had once told me I was a rebellious spirit, and uncannily smart. I was the perfect heir to take on his practice. When I had turned ten, Pa had begun teaching me the basics of the human body and common ailments. By the time I turned twelve, I knew how to reset broken bones, bandage a wound and fix up remedies for spring allergies. I had gotten into the routine of attending school or work during the day and medical training with Pa at night.

Dinner had been mashed potatoes and steak (a very, very common meal in District 10). Instead of just shutting up and eating, Penna spent that supper yacking about some boy she had her eyes on. At the age of twenty-five, Penna's only focus in life had been reduced to finding a husband. I would always roll my eyes at her blabber, wondering what was so great about wanting to spend the rest of one's life tied to another person. At eighteen I was determined not repeat the same petty existence as she was living. Her yammering was not unlike the potatoes I was consuming: bland and difficult to swallow. I just stared at the medical documents as if they were the answer to life itself in order to escape the madness my sister was spewing forth.

After dinner, I followed Pa into his study, where he quizzed me on human anatomy making sure I could name every bone, muscle and ligament, which was something I never fully understood; who cared what the proper name of the thumb bone was? A bone by any other name would be fixed or reset the exact same way.

I suppose you are wondering why I would begin my story off with such a mundane day. Well, that is how my life was every moment of everyday up until that evening. An evening which would be the prolog to the next chapter of my life that would change me forever.

Pa had just been quizzing me on every bone in the human foot when we heard a broken cry from the open window of the study. My father wasted no time in sticking his head out the window to peer through the darkness, in case it was another injured farmworker who needed medical attention. The cry grew louder.

"Who is it?" I asked, trying to see around my father's broad shoulder.

"I think it's the butcher's son," Pa answered.

"Trig?" I gasped. My father looked slightly pale as he reached for his medical kit.

"I'll make sure he's alright," he told me as he headed out the door, "you stay here and continue with your studying."

Well, of course I was on my father's heels as he ran over to the butcher's house next door. I had to make sure the poor kid was okay.

Trig's small figure was scrunched in a ball. He gripped his head tightly, digging his nails into his white-blond hair. Tears of pain streamed down his face from behind his thick, square glasses. Pa kneeled beside him on the ground, knowing that not even his medical expertise could help the boy. Pa was visibly shaking as he attempted to rub the child's back, while his other hand covered the boy's mouth in an attempt to stifle the sound he was making, because it was dangerous to draw attention to ourselves. I felt sick to my stomach; I knew all too well what was happening.

It was not the first time Trig had been in that condition (and I would later learn that it would also not his last). My father could not help him, because from a medical standpoint, there was nothing physically wrong with Trig. No one, not even my father, had a name for it. But, whatever it was, it was a frightening and well-kept secret that District 10 withheld from the Peacekeepers and the Capitol.

You see, every time Trig Leaton had an 'episode', he would know things. Things that wouldn't happen for weeks or months. He lived a moment of the future, and returned knowing what had yet to occur.

It is your choice whether you believe me or not. It is, after all, almost impossible to believe. Even my father, a man of scientific answers and explanations, had long submitted to the idea that Trig's episodes were something that he could not rationalize through logic, and it frightened him. As a child raised in a world of science and logic, it had frightened me too.

The first time an episode had happened, years before that night, Trig had been five years old. According to the teacher monitoring the kindergarten class during recess, Trig had been playing in the field when he suddenly collapsed onto the ground, clutching his head in pain and squealing like a dying pig. My father was alerted right away and was able to make it to the school just after the episode had ended. Right away, he began examining Trig for signs of a seizure, assuming the episode was a malfunction in the boy's brain. Trig, at that point, was shaking and crying.

While he was examining the boy, Trig suddenly cried out a single phrase over and over again, for the entire playground to hear.

"Dolly and the toothless boy will leave forever!"

Trig had been in hysterics and Pa did his best to keep him calm and more importantly, quiet. At the time he had written off Trig's words as a repercussion of his seizure, but any mention of death and dying that was caught by the Peacekeepers could lead to plenty of unwanted attention. I remember watching my father physically pick the boy up and carry him off, away from the resulting buzz of the children who had witnessed the event (myself included). Because the Leaton's lived next door, my father escorted Trig home.

The other schoolchildren and I did not see the boy for weeks, but apparently, Trig had spent that time at home, crying and constantly repeating that phrase with increasing aggravation, as though begging for someone to understand what he was talking about. Pa and the butcher tried to coax more out of him, but Trig was still too young to clearly vocalize what was bothering him.

I didn't see Trig again until the 13th annual Reaping, nearly a month later. Everyone in the District had to attend. I remember standing with my Pa and my mother, (as I had been too young for the Reaping at that time) while Mr. Leaton stood next to us with Trig in his arms. I watched as he was forced to keep is son quiet, while Trig struggled to get away from the scene.

The moment that both the tributes had been chosen had been an epiphany for my father. He watched in horror as Dolly Berwick and Samuel Trench were called to the stand. Our section of the District knew Dolly, as she attend school with us. The Samuel boy was from the northern section of District 10, but his gaping mouth exposed an empty void where his two front teeth should have been. Trig confirmed his suspicion by crying into his father's shoulder as he pointed to the two children on stage. It proved to be too uncanny to be a coincidence.

The rest is a bit of a blur to me, but somehow people who witnessed Trig's outburst had also placed two and two together, causing carefully hidden hysterics amongst the community. Suddenly, everyone knew about the boy who predicted the reaping (and later the deaths) of Dolly and Samuel. People from all over the District began sporadically showing up in our neighborhood, begging Trig to predict more, to tell them how their crops would do during the next summer season, whether there would be enough food for their family, or if their child would be the next Reaping victim. Trig had been overwhelmed by the publicity, and it had almost broken him. Trig had begun to have more episodes, but had no control over what and when he 'saw' these future events. It caused a lot of strain and him and his father, as well as raised the suspicion of some of the Peacekeepers, for it was impossible not to notice the sudden increase of travel to the Center of District 10.

It took several secret town meetings and agreements to force everyone to leave Trig alone, for they knew if they aroused any more suspicions, Trig would be discovered and taken away. Heaven knows what the Capitol would have done to him. They agreed for his safety, that they would no longer, personally, seek out his gift.

Things went back to the normal, lazy routine of District 10, but this time there was an undertone of secrecy amongst the people. One could feel it like a thick cloud coating the air. It's amazing that neither the Peacekeepers nor the Capitol discovered our looming secret.

As Trig grew older, his episodes were much less attention grabbing. Most of the time he would just scrunch up his face in pain and burry his head into his hands, and he could easily pass off an episode as just a horrible headache. Once he received a vision, he would write a letter to the people that would benefit from his knowledge. (Two years earlier, he was able to warn all the farmers in the southern part of the district of a frost, a week before it happen. His warning saved all of those crops, which accounted for a third of District 10's food supply.)

The only times that his episodes were horrific, was when he saw the next Reaping, or the subsequent deaths that would follow. Watching the gory and painful demises of the District's children (some of them would be people he knew) was something he just could not handle. And each year, Trig would sit down and write letters of sympathy for the soon-to-be affected families, which he would then give to them after the Reaping. He had learned very early on the negative consequences of alerting a family before the Reaping on situations that they could not change.

As his neighbor, I had seen each terrifying episode that he would have around this time of year, but it didn't lessen the fear that I felt each time I witnessed it.

With one last violent shiver, Trig's eyes shot open and darted around the area with confusion and fear. He locked eyes with Pa for a moment before speaking.

"I…I…..noooo," he sobbed, hugging his frail frame tightly. My father gave him a quick embrace before helping Trig to his feet. Despite having gone through this several times, Trig looked paler than ever as he struggled to stay balanced.

"Where is your father, son? Do you need help getting inside?" Pa asked, attempting to direct the boy inside and away from attention of the Peacekeepers that were undoubtingly nearby.

"Ah…at the shop," Trig stuttered, "I'll be alrigh-"

Trig stopped speaking as his eyes focused in on me, apparently just realizing that I was present. He stared me down for several long and uneasy seconds.

"Haya?" he croaked, his stuffy nose had made it difficult to articulate my name. My stomach dropped suddenly.

"..Yeah?" I responded; my throat had become unusually dry.

Trig ran forward and embraced me with the tightest hug I had ever, and still have ever, experienced in my life. My heart skipped a beat as dread rose in my body like bile.

I was too terrified to even look even look at my Pa's face.


End file.
